Potlucks, zines, silkscreened and handmade clothing and jewelry, pirate radio, self-released CDs records and cassettes, bikes built from the wheels up, and food that's been grown, cultivated and fermented with locality in mind...

DIY Culture has unfurled from its roots in the Indie/Punk counter-culture to become a widely used approach towards finding simple creative solutions to our disconnection from the world of materials and production. From Readymade magazine and Etsy, to zine collections at the public library, to You Tube instructional videos, there are no shortage of ways that people can learn how to make their own stuff and create their own culture. Yet for decades this kind of knowledge was shared among community, between friends and peers, developing innovations and cultural meaning along the way. In tandem a field of consideration, a murky, often complicated, set of ethical proposals and guides grew this community. With the rise of the internet anyone and their Grandmother might be applying strategies which some fifteen years ago might have seemed more inline with crustypunks and riot grrls in some Olympia, Washington basement. Now, decades after the rise of the so-called Indie scene, and with many of the tropes which were established within it now adopted beyond its borders, where do questions relating to not only materials and production, but also commodification, authorship, collectivity, and legality come into play? Are ideas generated, learned, adopted within, and further still disseminated outward from DIY scenarios, Tools or Ethics?

For many no place offered (or remains to offer) a more harmonious education in the DIY ethic than the House Show - a quasi-legal musical event that happens in basements, backyards and living rooms all over North America, organized by a loose and evolving networks of artists, musicians, students, anarchists and music fans. A perfectly haphazard scenario, the house show, as a platform altered, built-up, constructed and deconstruct over and over again by countless persons, offers a glimpse into the myriad ways in which one might live their life and (co)create a culture. In full, the House Show is not just a place to be entertained, but a locus to discover a whole range of life-ways, social politics and collective practices and skills. The House Show is a School House, a site of learning and exchange of ideas no less so than any other.

As series of events, discussions, and documents House Shows as School House acts as a means to intentionally open up a conversation about what and how we learn in this discrete environment of Punk/DIY culture. Through documentation of house shows, collaboration with local communities and public conversations around these activities House Show as Schoolhouse encourages a continuing opening up as to how we can create radical and authentic spaces of education, as well as discuss a history and its continuing effects... by means of D.I.O. (Doing It Ourselves!)